Chevrolet Volt Sure Drives Sweet

Nice, actually. There are still some bugs to work out before production begins late next year, but at this point the Volt promises to be a sweet ride.

General Motors turned us loose in a pre-production model to do some laps around Dodger Stadium. We spent about 45 minutes with the range-extended electric vehicle and added 8 miles to the odometer. That’s hardly enough time to offer a definitive assessment but enough to say the Volt is attractive, practical and fun to drive.

You can’t spend 10 minutes talking to anyone from GM without hearing the Chevrolet Volt called “a game-changer.” Hyperbole aside, the car is a leap forward. It runs exclusively on electricity. There’s also a 1.4-liter engine under the hood, but it isn’t connected to the wheels. Its only job is driving a 53-kilowatt generator that keeps the juice flowing when the battery runs down.

We drove a battery-only prototype in June, so we already knew the Volt is silent, smooth and somewhat swift under electric power. It was no different in the pre-production model. Acceleration is brisk, if not exhilarating. With 273 pound feet of instant torque on tap, the tires will chirp if you stomp on it.

“Burn rubber, not petroleum,” joked Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for the Volt, before we tried lighting up the low-rolling-resistance tires Goodyear developed specifically for the car. The tires are wrapped around 17-inch aluminum wheels.

GM says the lithium-ion battery is good for 40 miles. Once it winds down, the gasoline engine kicks in. That’s called charge-sustaining mode in hybrid parlance, but the GM marketing department calls it “extended-range mode.”

Whatever you call it, the transition is so smooth and silent it was easy to miss — until we hit the accelerator hard. The engine roared as if we’d missed a downshift. For a second we thought we’d broken one of only 88 pre-production Volts in the world. Posawatz explained that the generator was revving up to meet the demand for electrons.

“The software still isn’t exactly where we want it,” Posawatz said.

His crew has 11 months to get it nailed, because GM is hellbent on seeing the Volt start rolling off the line at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant next November.

A “sport mode” button on the dash boosts output from 90 kilowatts (120 horsepower) to 111 kilowatts (148). Push it and you’ll lose some efficiency, but the car accelerates with more authority. Our feel behind the wheel is the car’s claimed zero-to-60 time of around 8 second is in the ballpark.

The Volt is about the same size as the Toyota Prius and weighs a little more than the Chevrolet Cruze. The car’s final weight hasn’t been determined because GM hasn’t decided how big a gas tank to give it and there are other details to be worked out, but figure it’ll come in around 3,500 pounds.

It handles like any other small sedan. GM describes it as sporty. We’d describe it as nearly nimble. The ride is comfortable but not too soft, the steering is responsive, and the chassis is tight. The Volt isn’t a sports car, but it is reasonably fun to drive.

Plug the cord into a conventional 110-volt, 12-amp socket and you’ll charge the Volt’s battery in 6 or 8 hours. Stick it into a 220-volt, 15-amp outlet like your dryer uses and Posawatz said you can do it in less than 3.

Although the Volt has a 16-kilowatt-hour battery, it only uses half that. GM overbuilt the pack to ensure it’s good for at least 10 years or 150,000 miles. The General is backing it with a warranty that long.

“We’re very confident that we have a battery pack that delivers the range, durability and performance consumers have a right to expect,” said Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman and the guy cracking the whip to get the Volt built. If the battery shoots craps before the car does, Lutz said replacing it shouldn’t cost more than an engine overhaul.

“I don’t see why it would cost any more than that,” he said.

That’s optimistic at this point. Automakers, least of all GM, don’t discuss how much lithium-ion batteries cost. That’s one reason Nissan says it will lease the pack in the Leaf EV. Most experts say they run $500 to $1,000 per kilowatt-hour. GM — which is building its own batteries at a factory in Detroit — is confident costs will come down as hybrids, plug-in hybrids and EVs become more common.

Things are a bit tight inside — the Volt is a compact car — but comfortable. There’s only room for four people, because the car’s 400-pound T-shaped battery runs down the middle and under the back seats. That keeps the mass centralized, the center of gravity low and the pack safe.

“We protect the battery as well as the second-row passengers,” Posawatz said.

GM went for a decidedly high-tech look with the interior, drawing cues from consumer electronics. That big green button starts the car and turns it off. “It powers up and shuts down much like a computer,” said Brent Dewar, GM president for Chevrolet.

The controls are no less sophisticated than the drivetrain. The accelerator and brakes are fly-by-wire, and the steering uses an electric pump. Software controls it all, dictating, say, how the brake pedal feels.

The gearshift on the center console is essentially a big switch. There’s no gearbox, just a reduction gear. “Shifting” from drive to low almost triples the amount of regenerative braking when easing up on the accelerator. Take your foot off the pedal, and the car slows more quickly and returns more energy to the battery. The effect isn’t as dramatic as in the Mini E or Tesla Roadster electric cars, and n00bs will quickly get the hang of it.

In addition to the usual info like how fast you’re going and which “gear” you’re in, the 7-inch screen above the steering wheel tells you how much juice you’ve got, how much gas you’ve used and how much energy you’re sending back to the battery through regenerative braking.

Although the interior design is nearly finalized, GM is still working on the details of the display.

“We still have some work to do with our graphic designers,” Posawatz said.

These decorations on the door panels were the only thing about the sharp interior we didn’t like, but Posawatz said others will be offered. The fit and finish were top-notch. It oughta be — the car we drove is the last stop before full-scale production. With 11 months to go, time is running out.

General Motors took some heat over the Volt’s styling, which is smoother and more rounded than the aggressive concept car it unveiled at the Detroit auto show in 2007. The do-over was needed to maximize aerodynamic efficiency — and therefore range. The concept was such a brick, Lutz once joked it would have done better in the wind tunnel if they’d rolled it in backward.

GM is keeping mum about the Volt’s drag coefficient but says it is “very competitive against its competitors” — a veiled reference to the 2010 Toyota Prius.

The General invited the public to name the Volt’s signature blue-green color. More than 13,000 people submitted ideas. GM culled the list to three and put them to a vote online. “Viridian Joule” took the prize.

“I didn’t realize I had to explain viridian to so many people,” said David Sanford, the 40-year-old Florida man who came up with the name. “It’s Latin for green.”

The first Volt is slated to roll into showrooms by the end of 2010, and Lutz says GM plans to build between 8,000 and 10,000 in the first year. No word yet on the price, but GM is widely believed to be trying to keep the cost below $40,000. Add in the $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs and figure on a sticker price around $32,500. The Volt will appear in EV-lovin’ California first because, Lutz says, “California is a technological and environmental leader.” It’s also because the Volt will help GM meet California’s Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate dictating how many eco-friendlier cars the major automakers must offer.

Those of you beyond the Golden State needn’t worry. General Motors says it will announce other “lead markets” soon. The goal is to ramp up production to at least 50,000 cars a year and eventually sell the Volt worldwide while introducing its technology in other models.

“Movie titles aside,” Lutz said, referring to the film Who Killed the Electric Car?, “the electric vehicle is very much alive at General Motors. GM is moving from a company that was for 100 years focused on the mechanical propulsion of the automobile to the electrical propulsion of the automobile. This is a very big deal.”